Page:Lifelettersoffaradayjonesvol1.djvu/43

1812.
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Æt. 20-1.

ject, and I think I need not say I received it with good-will. I never yet, dear A., received anything from you but what I met with that feeling; and for the rest of the sentence, had I thought that your mind was so narrow as to be chagrined at seeing a better solution of this phenomenon from another person, I certainly should never have commenced this correspondence with you.

'I was this morning called by a trifling circumstance to notice the peculiar motions of camphor on water: I should not have mentioned the simple circumstance but that I thought the effect was owing to electricity, and I supposed that if you were acquainted with the phenomenon, you would notice it. I conceive, too, that a science may be illustrated by those minute actions and effects, almost as much as by more evident and obvious phenomena. Facts are plentiful enough, but we know not how to class them; many are overlooked because they seem uninteresting: but remember that what led Newton to pursue and discover the law of gravity, and ultimately the laws by which worlds revolve, was—the fall of an apple.

'My knife is so bad that I cannot mend my pen with it; it is now covered with copper, having been employed to precipitate that metal from the muriatic acid. This is an excuse—accept it.

'I have just finished putting the battery, as you term it, in action, and shall now let it remain for the night, acting on a solution of the muriate of ammonia. This is the disposition made: fifteen plates of zinc and as many of copper are piled up with discs of flannel inter-